Medina County Sports Hall of Fame: Jen Uhl was taught to savor positive moments

Jen (Uhl) Martin was 7 years old and a second-grader at Overlook Elementary, but she remembers one particular weekend like it was yesterday. The year was 1997, and a sophomore-laden Wadsworth girls basketball team that included future college stars Katelyn Vujas, Elisa Inman and Kate Lyren was preparing to play seemingly unbeatable Pickerington, ranked first in Ohio and second in the country, in the Division I state semifinals at Ohio State's legendary St. John Arena. Like thousands of other people in Wadsworth, Steve and Mary Uhl purchased tickets, put middle school daughter Stephanie and their precocious second-grader in the back seat of the family car and headed to Columbus. Once there, they watched in amazement as the Grizzlies overcame a 13-point deficit and stunned the Tigers, who were going for their fifth state championship, 48-47 in a game that wasn't decided until a Pickerington player missed an inside shot at the buzzer. It got even better the next night when tiny Jenny Martin fed Lyren for a buzzer-beating layup that gave the Grizzlies a 54-52 victory over Mason in the state championship game. Just like that, little Jen Uhl, who would grow 12 inches, to 6-foot-1, from the end of her fifth-grade year to the start of her seventh-grade year, knew what she wanted to do when she got to high school. "I was watching Kate Lyren make that buzzer-beater and I remember turning to my mom and saying, 'I want to play here someday,'" Uhl said. "That lit a fire in me. I wanted to be a Lady Grizzly." Uhl not only became a Lady Grizzly, she scored 1,304 points and finished her four-year career among the program's all-time leaders in rebounds and blocked shots while earning All-Ohio and All-Gazette honors her final three seasons. She also dominated at the net in her three varsity volleyball seasons, which led to her being named The Gazette's 2007 Senior Female Athlete of the Year. An incredibly upbeat person, Uhl went on to help the Bowling Green women's basketball team earn two NCAA Tournament bids, two berths in the Women's National Invitation Tournament, three regular-season Mid-American Conference titles and two MAC Tournament crowns. Now teaching and coaching in the Wadsworth school system, Uhl will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 16 ceremonies at The Galaxy Conference Center in her hometown. "She's always fun-loving and easygoing," said Andrew Booth, Uhl's basketball coach her final two seasons at Wadsworth and now her co-worker. "She enjoyed the game and she had fun playing it. That's not to take away from her work ethic and intensity, because they certainly were there, but she just had an attitude that this game is supposed to be fun. "We work together now, and to this day I don't think I've ever seen her get bent out of shape. That doesn't mean there wasn't a big fire burning, because she didn't like to get beat at anything, but she has always been positive. She's a born teacher, a born helper. She's super positive in everything she does and she always sees the best in people. She's just a unique person. She's a breath of fresh air every time you see her." Now 33, married to husband Patrick Martin and the mother of their two children, 6-year-old Jason and 5-year-old Maggie, Uhl is an eighth-grade language arts teacher and seventh-grade girls basketball coach at Wadsworth Middle School, where her students have included children whose mothers played on the Grizzlies' 1997 state championship team. Applying something she learned from her dad when she was her students' age, Uhl always tries to emphasize the positive. "I remember when I was in middle school, which is a tough age, I was 6-foot tall and I'd come home and be negative," she said. "My dad always would have me tell him three good things from my day. That switched my mindset and let me know there are always positives, that you can find good in every day if you look for it. "It's something my husband and I do now with our kids, and I try to have my students do it as well. My family is really big about celebrating any type of victory and that was instilled in me: Celebrate the small things. Your day may have been terrible, but find three good things that happened, even if one of them is something you had to eat. No matter how bad things may seem, try to find the positives." GROWING UP (AND UP) For a decent chunk of her childhood, Uhl was an average-sized kid doing slightly above average things on the soccer field and basketball court. Then, about the time she was finishing fifth grade, she started growing. And growing. And growing. By the time she started seventh grade, Uhl was 6-1. "I was always pretty athletic," she said, "but I was all arms and legs in sixth grade and trying to figure out my body." Already heavily involved in travel basketball, it was around then that a friend suggested that Uhl try volleyball. She agreed and underwent a backyard crash course from the mother of a friend, but she didn't fully understand the rules when her seventh-grade season began. "Our first game I jumped up and blocked a serve," she said, the astonishment in her voice still matching the astonished looks she got that day. "The ref blew his whistle and said, 'You can't do that!' I'm like, 'Why not?' My coach was like, 'Oh, my gosh,' but no one had ever told me I couldn't. I knew my job was to block the ball, so I did it." By the time her varsity volleyball career at Wadsworth was over, Uhl had set, legally, a school record for blocks in a season with 149. At the same time, she was making a bigger and bigger name for herself on the basketball court, where she and classmate Cassie Schrock formed a dynamic duo, with the ultra-competitive Schrock serving as LeBron James and Uhl functioning as Anthony Davis. "Compared to my crazy butt she was laid back, but we brought out the best in each other," said Schrock, a three-time Gazette MVP in the sport. "Everybody has that competitive streak in them. I'd put in the work, so she'd have to put in the work. Then she'd put in the work, so I'd have to put in the work. "Jen was a really well-rounded offensive player. She could post you up, but she could also step out and shoot the three. That's what made her dangerous. She could really stretch the court." When Uhl and Schrock were juniors and Booth was in his first year as coach of the Wadsworth program, the Grizzlies reached the D-I state semifinals. "When you have two kids of that caliber and that talent, it's awesome," Booth said. "One great player, you can key on. Two was a luxury for our team. They were both so unselfish and so versatile and they both could play inside and out." For Uhl, Wadsworth's tournament run in 2006 was every bit as memorable as her second-grade family trip to Columbus. "Katelyn Vujas, Elisa Inman, those two girls were my heroes for a large portion of my life," she said of the sophomore post players who led Wadsworth in 1997. "I wanted to play like them and I wanted to be a role model like them." In her own friendly, smiling way, Uhl was definitely that, which wasn't lost on Lindsay (Tenyak) Berger, a freshman in that 2005-06 season who remains a close friend and is now Jason Uhl's first-grade teacher at Overlook. "Coming in as a freshman you're the youngest, so you just follow," Tenyak said. "Jen was so embracing. She's got that very bubbly, outgoing personality, so it was easy to trust her and follow her lead. "I don't think I've ever seen her mad. Maybe fired up, but never mad. She's just always very happy. Coach Booth would get upset with us sometimes because we were always very, um, spirited." The highlight of that 2006 tournament run came in the regional finals, where Wadsworth beat a very good North Canton Hoover team to return to the state semifinals for the first time since a three-year run led by Vujas, Inman and Lyren ended in 1999. The Grizzlies fell 66-62 to Solon in the semifinals, but Uhl prefers to remember all the positives. Wadsworth played at Ohio State's newly built Schottenstein Center instead of the more intimate St. John Arena, where she had dreamed of competing, but Uhl wouldn't trade the tournament experience for anything. "It felt magical," she said. "I had played AAU with a couple of the North Canton girls and they beat us in the first game of the season. We were getting ready to play them again and one of the parents said, 'Just keep smiling.' We ended up writing that on the board in the locker room at the Canton Civic Center: Just keep smiling. Then we came out in the first quarter and couldn't miss." STILL WINNING Uhl's basketball career at Bowling Green, where her teams compiled a 110-25 record (.815) over four seasons, was just as successful as her career at Wadsworth. The Falcons went 26-8 and reached the WNIT her freshman year, when she came off the bench, and improved to 29-5 with another WNIT appearance with her starting as a sophomore. Uhl also started her final two seasons, when BG went 27-7 and 28-5 and won a pair of MAC Tournament titles. The Falcons lost to Michigan State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament her junior year and to Georgia Tech in the first round her senior season. Fittingly, the final game of her career was played at St. John Arena. "I loved Bowling Green from the moment I stepped on campus," said Uhl, who averaged 7.0 points and 5.5 rebounds as a junior and 9.0 points and a team-best 6.1 boards as a senior. "Coach (Curt) Miller really preached family and togetherness. As someone who has a very tight-knit family and had been on tight-knit teams, I loved that. "I would do it again in a heartbeat. I still talk to some of my teammates on a weekly basis. They became my family when I was in school. That's the thing I miss the most about college. I miss seeing them on a daily basis." One of those teammates was Jess (Slagle) Powell, who came to BG from Lehman Catholic High in Sidney, Ohio, following Uhl's freshman season. "She is one of the most joyful people that I know, the most upbeat person I know," Slagle said. "The coaching staff got it exactly right when they chose the person to take me around on my recruiting visit, because our energies match perfectly. "When we lost in a game of pickup or if it was a big game, that's the only time you would see Jen mad or upset, but not for very long. She was a phenomenal teammate. She always had my back and she was always very encouraging. She always helped the people around her become better players and better people." Uhl is still doing that, only now it's as a wife, mother, teacher and coach. For that, she deflects credit to husband Patrick, a former baseball player at Bowling Green, older sister Stephanie, a former Wadsworth cheerleader, uncle Bob Vukelich, one of her biggest supporters growing up, and parents Steve, a standout athlete at West Holmes High, and Mary, a multi-sport star at Brunswick. "My parents were incredibly huge factors," Uhl said. "My mom, after that (1997) state tournament game, took me out in the driveway and we practiced layups a thousand times. In all my years playing, I don't know if they ever missed a game. They were there to cheer me on and give me a hug after the good games and the bad games." After earning an education degree from Bowling Green in 2012, Uhl spent a summer studying in Spain, which helped her cope with the fact her playing career was over, then earned a master's degree in learning and technology online from Western Governors University in 2020. Uhl also served as a varsity assistant to Booth from 2012-17 — the Grizzlies won a state title in 2016 — and a varsity assistant in volleyball from 2012-18 before taking a break from coaching when her children were born. She returned to coaching seventh-grade girls basketball in 2022-23, with her dad serving as her assistant. "I don't even know how to put it into words," she said of the latter experience. "My dad is such a level, organized, kind man. The girls loved him because he provided a smile and kind face at all times. It was so cool I got to spend extra time with my dad. To be able to talk through things with him was a really great experience, and I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. He's already talking about next season." Whether next season results in a lot of wins, some tough lessons or a combination of the two, Uhl will always be able to find three positive things from each day. It's something she learned to do not long after attending the 1997 Wadsworth basketball team's state tournament games. "I apply things I learned from sports every single day of my life," she said. "I learned how to be a teammate, how to work hard, how to be competitive, how to manage my time, how to be supportive. I've learned how to take care of myself, how to take care of my family. People talk about wins and losses, but all the other things I learned were much more important." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.